Rangers 1 Valencia 1: match report

Read a full match report of the Champions League Group C match between Rangers
and Valencia at Ibrox Stadium, Glasgow on Wednesday Oct 20 2010.

Unbeaten after three Champions League games and still well in contention for European football after Christmas, Walter Smith and his players have exceeded the expectations which were muted after a summer of little transfer activity.

All the same, they will regard this as an opportunity lost against the side seeded second in Group C.

Once again Smith deployed his trusted and honed 5-4-1 formation and once more he earned reward, with Maurice Edu putting the Scottish champions ahead with a spectacular first-half header only for the same player – who hit the post between times – to bring Valencia back into contention when he headed into his own net shortly after the restart.

Even then, although they lived dangerously for spells, Rangers could have won – on merit – had they not failed to convert a procession of chances which saw Richard Foster (on his first start), Sasa Papac, Steven Davis and Steven Naismith all see attempts either diverted past saved or simply squandered.

Valencia produced a fine first-half performance away to Barcelona on Saturday night and although they conceded the lead and lost 2-1 after the break, they left the Catalan fortress widely praised for the quality of their play. Nevertheless, their coach, Unai Emry, made wholesale changes for this occasion.

The fact that half their outfield team had been switched might have unsettled Valencia but in the opening stages they showed few signs of edginess.

That, though, was in part because Rangers stood off them, allowing Emry’s players an unwanted degree of possession only 30 yards out.

To the alarm of the home support, Steven Whittaker made ominous unforced errors, one of them with a pass straight to Pablo Hernandez who accepted the invitation to smack a low shot into Allan McGregor’s arms.

Edu, too, got into trouble on the edge of his own box but was saved when Steven Davis stepped in to hoist a long ball towards Kenny Miller, once more the lone attacker. For all these early jitters, Rangers proved true to Smith’s promise that they would attempt to find a way to create menace at the other end of the field.

Foster and Miller combined to put Steven Naismith in for a half volley that cannoned back off Cesar Sanchez and roused the home support into their first furore of the evening.

They soon had more cause to bellow when a Naismith cross found Miller at the back post for a header that was again blocked by the goalkeeper. Rangers then sliced Valencia open with clinical exactitude when Davis chipped over the advancing Valencia back line for Miller, peeling into the gap between defenders and goalkeeper.

The Rangers fans rose as one in anticipation as Miller bore down on Sanchez but the top scorer at Ibrox was for once guilty of failure of imagination as he drove straight at the goalkeeper.

The waste of such an opportunity raised the inevitable question of whether Rangers would pay a severe cost for profligacy, but the prospect receded somewhat 11 minutes before the interval when Weiss hung a corner kick towards the back post.

Edu hurled himself horizontally at the delivery and seemed to hang in the air as he made contact to head beyond Sanchez and into the net. Gravity then insisted on its part in the proceedings as Edu plunged to earth, winding himself badly on contact.

The denizens of the Ibrox stands were in vertical motion, meanwhile, bouncing in their places with such vigour that the stadium reverberated in time with their efforts.

The exchange of energy between support and players fuelled Rangers into a finish to the half of such power that Emery changed his line-up again for the restart, moving to a 4-4-2 with Roberto Soldado thrown up front alongside Aritz Aduriz. Valencia were indeed soon level, but from the most unlikely source.

Tino Costa took a free-kick with a dangerous enough delivery, but it was Edu who rose, trying to intercept, and succeeded only in flighting a backward header past his own goalkeeper.